ANALYSE AND COMPARE TWO HISTORICAL TEXTS

First, read the two following texts.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789

Article I – Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded
only on the common good.

Article II – The goal of any political association is the conservation of the natural and
imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, safety and resistance against
oppression.

Article III – The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no
individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.

Article IV – Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of
the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society
the fruition of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law.

Article V – The law has the right to forbid only actions harmful to society. Anything which is not
forbidden by the law cannot be impeded, and no one can be constrained to do what it does not
order.

Article VI – The law is the expression of the general will. All the citizens have the right of
contributing personally or through their representatives to its formation. It must be the same for
all, either that it protects, or that it punishes. All the citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally
admissible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacity and
without distinction other than that of their virtues and of their talents.

Article VII – No man can be accused, arrested nor detained but in the cases determined by the
law, and according to the forms which it has prescribed. Those who solicit, dispatch, carry out or
cause to be carried out arbitrary orders, must be punished; but any citizen called or seized under
the terms of the law must obey at once; he renders himself culpable by resistance.

Article VIII – The law should establish only penalties that are strictly and evidently necessary,
and no one can be punished but under a law established and promulgated before the offense
and legally applied.

Article IX – Any man being presumed innocent until he is declared culpable if it is judged
indispensable to arrest him, any rigor which would not be necessary for the securing of his
person must be severely reprimanded by the law.
Article X – No one may be disquieted for his opinions, even religious ones, provided that their
manifestation does not trouble the public order established by the law.

Article XI – The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious
rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of
this liberty, in the cases determined by the law.

Article XII – The guarantee of the rights of man and of the citizen necessitates a public force:
this force is thus instituted for the advantage of all and not for the particular utility of those in
whom it is trusted.

Article XIII – For the maintenance of the public force and for the expenditures of administration,
a common contribution is indispensable; it must be equally distributed to all the citizens,
according to their ability to pay.

Article XIV – Each citizen has the right to ascertain, by himself or through his representatives,
the need for a public tax, to consent to it freely, to know the uses to which it is put, and of
determining the proportion, basis, collection, and duration.

Article XV – The society has the right of requesting an account from any public agent of its
administration.

Article XVI – Any society in which the guarantee of rights is not assured, nor the separation of
powers determined, has no Constitution.

Article XVII – Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of private
usage, if it is not when the public necessity, legally noted, evidently requires it, and under the
condition of a just and prior indemnity.

Constitutional Council of the French Republic

 Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female
Citizen, 1791
Article I

The first article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaims that "Men are
born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common
utility." The first article of Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen responds:
"Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights. Social distinctions may only be based
on common utility."

Article II and Article III

Articles II and III extend the articles in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to
include both women and men in their statements.

Article IV

Article IV declares that "the only limit to the exercise of the natural rights of woman is the
perpetual tyranny that man opposes to it" and that "these limits must be reformed by the laws of
nature and reason". In this statement, de Gouges is specifically stating that men have
tyrannically opposed the natural rights of women, and that these limits must be reformed by the
laws of a political organization in order to create a society that is just and protects the Natural
Rights of all.

Article V

Article V is unchanged from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

Article VI

De Gouges expands the sixth article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen,
which declared the rights of citizens to take part in the formation of law, to: "All citizens including
women are equally admissible to all public dignities, offices and employments, according to their
capacity, and with no other distinction than that of their virtues and talents."

Article VII through Article IX

Articles VII through IX again extend the articles in the Declaration of the Rights of Man to include
both women and men in their statements.

Article X

In Article X, de Gouges draws attention to the fact that, under French law, women were fully
punishable, yet denied equal rights, declaring: "Women have the right to mount the scaffold, they
must also have the right to mount the speaker's rostrum".This statement would go on to be
well-known and spread to wide audiences.

Article XI

De Gouges declares, in Article XI, that a woman should be allowed to identify the father of her
child/children. Historians believe that this could relate to de Gouges' upbringing as a possible
illegitimate child, and allows women to demand support from fathers of illegitimate children.

Article XII

This article explains that the declaration of these rights for women is a great benefit to society,
and does not only benefit those protected by it. According to her biographer, Olivier Blanc, de
Gouges maintained that this article be included to explain to men the benefit they would receive
from support of this Declaration despite the advice to her of the Society of the Friends of Truth.

Article XIII through Article XVI

Articles XIII through XVI extend the articles in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen to include both women and men in their statements.

Article XVII

The seventeenth article of the Declaration expresses sexual equality of marriage, and that upon
marriage, women and men are found equal in the eyes of the law – this means that upon divorce,
property is split evenly between the involved parties, and property cannot be seized without
reason from women (as it is not seized from men).

Olympe de Gouges
Now, answer the following questions:

1. What type of texts are they? Who wrote it and when? Who is written for?
2. What does each declaration try to achieve? Why are they considered fundamental to
the abolition of the Ancien Régime?
3. What ideological principles inspired the two declarations? Briefly explain its historical
context.
4. Compare the two declarations. What is the main difference between them? What was
the role of women during the French Revolution?
5. Why are these texts historically important? Do you think they are still relevant today?
Justify your answer.